E3 2009: EA Booth Report

Share.

The industry titan shows off a metric ton of new games.

By IGN Staff

For years, EA has been the biggest third party publisher in the world. Wandering around their E3 booth this year, it was hard to avoid reckoning with that fact. EA has a massive line-up of games on every system conceivable, as well as some private booths showing off even more games not quite ready for exposure to the plebes.

Wii're having a great time.

EA's booth was cut in half with one side completely open and featuring a small stage at the far end and a rectangular screen playing trailers above it. While there weren't any onstage presentations as I strolled through the booth, there were still small clumps of people gathered in the open spaces gawking at the trailers playing on the screen above (Dante's Inferno, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Need for Speed SHIFT).

On the other side of the booth, EA had a veritable hive of demo kiosks showing off their massive slate of games. The first wave of games were EA Sports titles. The Xbox 360 version of Madden NFL 10 sat alongside Fight Night Round 4 showing off two of the prettiest games in EA's lineup. Next to Madden were the new sports titles EA is bringing to Wii. EA Sports Active has already been out a couple of weeks but EA was happily demoing the fitness game on 4 screens.

All the pretty colors.

Then there was the Wii Motion Plus enabled Grand Slam Tennis and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 right next to one another. There were a lot of curious gamers crowded around these booths. EA's Motion Plus sports games will be the first titles to offer a peripheral pack-in not published by Nintendo. It's been almost three years since motion powered golf and tennis games arrived in Wii Sports, but the addition of Motion Plus had the players I saw grinning to themselves as they experimented with the controls for the first time.

Hut, hut, hike.

Dead Space Extraction also had a big presence on the show floor. Last year's horror shooter set in space won over lots of critics, and EA is hoping to follow up on the strong debut with an immersive prequel built exclusively for Wii. The game functions similarly to a light gun game but Visceral Games has put a lot of work into fleshing out the first person point of view so it feels like you're playing as an actual human rather than a robot on rails. There are lots of naturalistic movements and animation, and the camera frequently moves to interact with other NPC's in a way that looks quite a bit more cinematic than most other light gun game. EA is calling the approach a "guided first person experience."

Gamer face of infinite intensity.

In the center of the booth were EA's two new installments in its Need for Speed franchise. Need for Speed SHIFT hopes to bring the series back into high regard on PS3 and Xbox 360 with an immersive and realistic gearhead simulator. Need for Speed NITRO is a Wii exclusive installment of the franchise and will feature more arcade-style gameplay. The Need for Speed games have had a rough time with reviewers in the last few years, but they continue to be major sellers with each yearly installment and this year's installments seemed to draw a good crowd.

Fore.

On the other side of Need for Speed was a big cluster of Brutal Legend kiosks. Tim Schafer's games have always been critical darlings but rarely have they reached the kind of blockbuster status that EA is pushing for Brutal Legend. They had a huge banner outside of the convention center and there were sizable lines of people waiting to play the game in the far corner of EA's booth. It'll be interesting to see if the game's retro heavy metal aesthetic will sell to the mainstream audiences that EA is targeting. If anyone deserves a hit it's certainly Tim Schafer.

It's not an Autobot.

Finally EA had several other games on-hand in private meeting rooms along the perimeter of its booth. I made a bee-line for the Army of Two: The 40th Day booth, as a big fan of the original. EA was showing an area from the game's single player game and demonstrating a new mechanic where players make moral choices that will eventually come to affect the gameplay later on. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was also being shown behind closed doors. The multiplayer was the focus here and it benefitted greatly from the upgraded destructible environments system.

Grand slamming some tennis balls.

EA may have some serious competition from Activision-Blizzard for the official title as the world's biggest third party publisher, but their booth at E3 showed off how aggressive and diverse their lineup of games really is.

A guided first person terror. Now with fire.

For more images from the EA booth make sure to check out the gallery below!